Violeta Isabel by Allende,
Bloomsbury
Allende’s new novel is bookended by two world-changing pandemics. We start with a letter from our narrator, Violeta del Valle, aged 100, writing to her grandson, Camilo. She says her life story could make a novel … cue chapter one. It’s a stormy Friday in 1920 when Violeta is born, the first daughter in a family of sons in an unnamed South American country. The Spanish flu has hit and the del Valles tough it out quarantining in their mansion.
They make it through only to be hit by the Great Depression. A whirlwind through history follows as the feisty Violeta encounters tragedy, love and loss all against the backdrop of the world’s biggest events. Sublime.